Practical Palm Pre WebOS Projects (Beginning) [Paperback]

Frank Zammetti (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1430226749 | ISBN-13: 978-1430226741 | Publication Date: December 17, 2009 | Edition: 1

This is the project basedPalm Pre programming book. It talks about writing games, useful applications and it turns a journeyman web developer into a champion Palm Pre programmer. Any Javascript coder out for a bit of fun and profit will jump on the Palm, since it is the only mobile platform permitting Javascript coding.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Frank W. Zammetti is an experienced Apress author, having authored five books on web development topics.  Frank is an architect/lead developer for PNC Bank who has around 15 years of professional development experience plus another 10 or so of amateur experience (meaning he wasn't being paid for his efforts, but it was just as involved!).  Frank has a background in mobile development, having developed and sold a number of applications and games for the Windows Mobile platform.  Frank is an active open-source community member, contributing to a number of projects, leading a couple and has even started a few of his own.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (December 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430226749
• ISBN-13: 978-1430226741
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #152,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars inspiring, January 27, 2010

By 

Thelonius Mingus "magellan2k" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Practical Palm Pre WebOS Projects (Beginning) (Paperback)

5 Stars mean: I am very pleased about Zammetti's book. I first bought "the other book" about webos developement and was pretty diappointed. But Zammetti helps a lot getting things working.
When he first starts in 1980 you don't need to be afraid he will be keeping pages filled with letters you didn't ever need to know. He soon comes to his topic and keeps a straight pace up to the end of the book.
After an introduction that gives an overview about the anatomy and the "organs" of a webos application which helps planning the structure of your future project he shows all the most of the inhabitants of the Mojo Framework by a learning by example paradigm. Compared to the other book available the examples seem to be good suited for the purpose of showing the concept proof. They are available on the publishers homepage and:: they work!
He really explaines everything he is doing step by step always distinguishing wether it's a matter of Javascript, of the Mojo Framework, of the program logic etc. so you can always keep track, what the talk is about. This is helpful in particular for developers who are new or not that experienced in the web techniques beeing used (JS, CSS, HTML).
Zammetti obviously - and this is worth being noted - not has just repeated the stuff available over the net - especially in the palm developer center. Where things or better the documentation became obscure he dived into the sample code provided by palm to analyse the function of special structures and openly admitted, when something remaines unclear, and where Palm has to invest some further work to clear things at the documentation. This is obviously something you cannot get over the net in a comparable structured manner.
So I found the book very helpful for starting webos developing, easy to follow reading it.
5 Stars!
Thank you Frank!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not worth the money, November 25, 2010

By 

Jerald J. Johnson "Jerry" (Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Practical Palm Pre WebOS Projects (Beginning) (Kindle Edition)

I spent 3 days trying to run the first example finally gave up, the book is not up to date with the info found on the web, and above all DON'T BUY THE KINDLE VERSION the list of code printed is too small to read and stays the same no mater what size the fount you use. If I had the paperback version I would give it to anyone that wanted it. I am the webmaster for several web sites and am not a top professional but my customers are happy. The only things I learned were how to put the Palm Pre in developer mode, thats not in the book but it helps you find it and 2 The Mojo thing is a pain to use, I have used PHP and didn't like it either, but was able to get by.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I have had trouble with this book being useful., March 8, 2010

By 

RT (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Practical Palm Pre WebOS Projects (Beginning) (Paperback)

I wanted to like this book. I really need a good Web OS book with examples.

It is very hard to find what you are looking for in this book. The index is not very comprehensive.

Examples/ I was trying to find examples of a dialog box and a timer. There is no reference to either in the index. And since you can't download a copy as a pdf, you can't search the text of the book.

There may be examples of what you need in the book but how to find.....